The animal in the machine

the alchemy of transforming vibrational frequency into vibrant creative expression

This is a 4-part series. To read the last entry, click here. To peep the full series, click here.

If you thought your creative channel and the way you develop ideas was exclusively a function of your mind, your intellect, the little guy in your brain that pulls the levers, that might actually explain a lot about why you’re functioning at a fraction of your creative capacity.

No, really, if you’re not taking advantage of your physical anatomy to improve the flow of ideas, you’re only fighting half the battle.

You may remember from our last conversation that your creative channel is connected to your literal spine—the other column of energy at your center. The sensations picked up by your nervous system can alert you to where new energies and ideas might be working their way through your body, and your circulatory system—guided by the breath—can help you move them along their path.

All you have to do is practice identifying, interpreting, and relating to these energies directly and you can start participating in the alchemy of transforming vibrational frequency into vibrant creative expression.

Opening to your inner animal

Using the mechanics of your physical body to conduct the flow of energy (emotions, ideas) means giving over to your primal self. When we’re operating from the primal self, we’re releasing projected dichotomies of “good” and “bad” or “right” and “wrong” and allowing sensation to speak for itself. Not everything that happens here might be experienced as neutral but the challenge is to allow your conscious mind to approach it as neutral. Meaning, we resist any excessive storytelling.

We don’t shun the narratives that come to mind when approaching these energies but we don’t engage them either. We simply notice while coming back to the feeling itself and practice opening to what that intelligence has to share with us.

Delaying the desire for cognitive understanding and interpretation creates more space for new experiences and expanding emotional/intuitive understanding of the energies that visit us. It allows our inner darkness to speak for itself without our sociocultural conditioning doing the talking for it, distorting its message.

That space also invites our Genius to come in and tell us how we can express these energies creatively. This is how we learn to collaborate with “low vibe” emotions instead of rigidly controlling them.

If this feels eerily unhinged, consider that micromanaging the energies that move through us is an oppressive, colonial strategy that has failed us for centuries. Seriously, give me one example of a time when slipping an iron grip on another conscious being has yielded positive results. In this house, we believe in collaboration and cooperation, not control.

There are tons of practices to help you move energy through your creative channel

If you’ve been watching the recent HBO docuseries, Breath of Fire, you’ll be well aware that Kundalini Yoga once originated as one man’s grift and wide-ranging abuse scheme (for real, he’s horrible), but that doesn’t change the fact that this practice gets real results for artists everywhere.

This just in: morally bankrupt and otherwise misaligned people can channel great spiritual wisdoms, too.

Did you think only “good” and wise, spiritually pure people, anointed by some spiritual authority, had access to aetheric intel? If only it were that simple!

I often see similar criticisms of systems such as Human Design—a blend of the I-Ching, Vedic philosophy, Astrology, and Kabbalah, channeled by a controversial white man with no formal study in any of these traditions. And yet, once again, HD has helped countless people understand themselves and move toward authentic expression for decades.

I cordially invite you to critique any of these systems and creators. After all, no one is a perfect and pure channel. Richard Rudd has made an entire career off of reinterpreting Rah’s work with Human Design and many—including myself—believe it to be a much-needed extension of the original system.

But one thing you can’t do is upend all of these systems—consigning them to the spiritual refuse pile—solely based on the flaws of the people who created them.

All systems of spirituality were, at some point, channeled. They were made up! And then they were practiced by a bunch of different people over a certain period of time and refined through the personal experience and spiritual insight of individual practitioners. That’s how spiritual lineages are established. Which means that you can establish a spiritual lineage of your own. You don’t need to be handed the “correct” practice to move energy through your creative channel. You just have to experiment, play around a little, and see what works for you. Because what is magick if not a system of fuck around and find out?

Enter, energy body meditation

Energy body meditation is some shit that I made up. It’s my Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG). But it would be an insult to all the practices that have inspired me to say it’s entirely made up. It’s a combination of what I’ve learned from breathwork, yoga, tantra, pussy-stroking meditations from a charismatic cult leader I cautiously attended as an outsider for awhile (I like to delay judgement for as long as possible due to the aforementioned reality of flawed people creating brilliantly flawed work), somatic experiencing, and a plethora of other things I’ve tried.

What I recognized is that all of these practices are essentially just learning how to relate to and operate your energy system—using the physical mechanics of your physical body to influence the movements of your energy body.

And what is your energy body? Well, it’s the morphic field that exists inside and just outside of you. It’s your vibrational field.

Energy body meditations (EBM) can look a bajillion different ways. The more you experiment with what energy manipulation can do, the more potential for this practice multiplies.

If you’re not accustomed to somatic work, this practice might initially feel like make-believe. This really bothered me in the first 2 years of experimentation.

As someone with cPTSD, I have struggled to trust myself and my first person experience and that always lead me to worrying I wasn’t doing these practices “correctly” or that I was imagining things. But what I learned is that most of our perception is, in some capacity, imagined. How our body takes in physical data through our 6 senses (touch, taste, sound, sight, smell, and interoception) and converts it into cognitive awareness is a complete mystery. Whether everything we experience is real—in the sense that it can be verified outside of us—is as yet unknown.

So, what’s the point in being paranoid? Might as well entertain the possibility that your imagination is just as real as any other aspect of your experience, right?

The base practice of EBM

The basis of EBM is simply breathing energy up and down the spine—usually from the supine position because that’s what I prefer. That’s literally it. That’s all you have to do. You inhale into your perineum (your root), your lower belly (sacral), your diaphragm (solar plexus), your chest (heart), your throat, your head (third eye), and all the way up to your scalp (crown), and then you breath that energy all the way back down.

Usually, I start my practice with a few cleansing breaths, so I send my exhale all the way down to the soles of my feet and imagine bright, white or yellow light sweeping all the cobwebs from my body.

Next, I practice moving the energy up and down my spine for awhile, noticing what sensations emerge in each energy center and any images that arise as I do this.

Then, I imagine each exhale sending energy outside the bounds of my skin and into my auric field, allowing that field to expand with every breath until sometimes I feel like I’m the size of Jupiter themself. (Literally. It’s trippy af. And if you’ve never experienced it before, it can also be disorienting and scary. Word of warning.)

Like I said, there are so many variations on this practice. Here’s just a few:

• Sometimes I’m very focused on my sexual energy as I do this. I keep my attention on my pelvic floor and imagine breathing energy through the most important portal we humans have—the one that creates life.¹ I notice how this energy feels moving through each of my energetic centers and remain open to any messages it has for me.

• Sometimes I’m working with one particular sensation² so I practice dialoguing with it, breathing into it, moving whatever part of my body I find it in to mobilize it, directing it through different energy centers and body parts, letting it “talk to” other sensations—whatever feels right in the moment.

• Sometimes, laying still and breathing is not the tea—especially when you’re working with more high-voltage emotions such as anger. So in those cases, I incorporate more intuitive movement, do my practice while sitting or standing, and maybe even use movement to create new sensations in my body for that energy to coregulate with.

In today’s guided meditation (located at the bottom of this article), I’m going to direct you in proper deep breathing patterns—how to use your muscles to ensure that you’re filling from root, lower belly, all 360° of your diaphragm, and the top of your chest, then exhaling from chest to belly, and fully expelling the air at the bottom. After that, we’re going to let that go a little, loosening up on the perfect deep breathing pattern, so we can focus on feeling the energy moving. Finally, we’ll practice expanding our auras.

WARNING: This practice can be highly activating to the nervous system. It involves sustained presence and forms of stimulation that your body may not be used to.

I recommend only doing this practice early in the day and either before or at least 30 minutes after eating. It’s surprisingly energizing and might disrupt sleep.

Seriously, do not fuck around with this meditation. It might initially feel like nothing but can have extreme and even delayed effects when your body isn’t accustomed to it.

If you are unsure of your capacity, try setting a timer for 5 minutes and pausing the recording to check in with yourself before continuing—if you’re unsure, wait at least 24 hours before attempting more. Here are some ideas for how you can adapt this practice to make it more accessible:

• Keep your eyes open throughout the practice.

• Do this practice sitting up in bed with a pillow on your lap or a weighted blanket.

• Ground yourself beforehand by looking around the room and describing the shapes, colors, and textures you see.

• Do this practice while standing and allow yourself to slowly sway back and forth or gently bounce on the balls of your feet.

• Add a gentle hum to your exhale and pay close attention to the vibration in your body.

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Footnotes

1. If you don’t have a vagina, it helps to remember that you almost did in the womb, and the energy body of your specific genitalia retains a similar energetic expression no matter what it turns into.

2. It’s always helpful to notice how you land in the practice before you begin. Start by taking just a moment before deepening your breathing to scan your body and notice what is present. It’s also good to notice what sort of breathing pattern you’re starting with.

GUIDED MEDITATION: The base practice of EBM